UTAG urges govt to address security challenges ahead of 2024 polls

The University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG) has entreated the government, citizens and development partners to take concrete steps to address all security challenges across the country to ensure a peaceful election in 2024. 

It said it was also important for the right systems and structures to be put in place for a credible election come December 2024.

UTAG, in a communiqué issued and jointly signed by the National President, Prof. Mamudu Akudugu and National Secretary, Dr Eliasu Mumuni at the end of its 21st Biennial National Congress at the University for Development Studies (UDS) in Tamale cited the recent coup d’états in some West African countries to buttress its point on the need for all security challenges to be resolved ahead of the 2024 general election to ensure peaceful polls.

Disturbances

“The disturbances in Burkina Faso and the active presence of jihadists in the area have the potential to spill over to Ghana, especially through Bawku, where a tribal conflict has been raging on over the last two years with no end in sight.

“UTAG, therefore, entreats government, citizens and development partners to take concrete steps to address all security challenges across the country to ensure a peaceful election in 2024,” UTAG said.

The association said it supported the call by the Trade Union Congress (TUC) to develop the workers/citizens' manifesto for adoption of all political parties heading into the 2024 general election.

“We strongly believe that this move will place the workers/citizens’ welfare at the centre of the national development agenda.

 We also believe that such development will make the political parties more accountable to the people and thus reflect the needs and aspirations of the ordinary Ghanaian,” it said.

Expertise

In this light, UTAG would make available its expertise across the various sectors of the economy to the TUC for the development/deployment of the manifesto.

The association called for an immediate resumption and completion of the constitution review process to strengthen the fundamental laws of the country.

That, it said would enhance good governance, inclusiveness, and sustainable development to ensure that no one was left behind.

“UTAG finds the non-implementation of the reviewed 1992 Constitution of the Republic of Ghana very troubling.

We take exception to the very partisan challenge of policy discontinuity that plagues our efforts at development and violates the Directive Principles of State Policy that enjoins regimes to continue with programmes initiated by previous regimes as much as possible. 

“We note that having spent state resources to set up a Constitution Review Commission of Inquiry in January 2010 to undertake such a crucial exercise of nationwide public consultations culminating in a report submitted to the government in December 2011 and the issuance of the White Paper in June 2012, Ghanaians are yet to see real efforts from successive governments to implement the recommendations of the commission,” it said, adding that “This is unacceptable given the difficulties of the current times where the practice of executive authority almost veers into the realms of authoritarianism, as well as the inefficiency in governance due partly to the enormous responsibility placed on the shoulders of the executive President”.

Thus, it said the deliberate stalling of Ghana’s constitution review process did a great disservice to the quest for good governance and sustainable development and the general improvement in Ghanaians' physical quality of life.

Based on the foregoing, “we call for an immediate resumption and completion of the constitution review process to strengthen the fundamental laws of Ghana for good governance, inclusiveness and sustainable development that “leave no one behind”.